Thursday, December 15, 2005

SOUTH BEND -- Fighting Irish fans in the lottery for Fiesta Bowl tickets will know by Monday whether their holiday wishes will come true.

Because of high demand, the majority of those ticket seekers will be disappointed.

The Notre Dame ticket office will notify lottery participants Monday whether they are among those who will receive tickets for the Jan. 2 bowl game, said Josh Berlo, the university's director of ticket operations.

Some lottery participants may call the ticket office Friday hoping for results. "If we have the results, we'll be glad to give them out," Berlo said, but Monday is the more likely date.

A total of 45,589 tickets have been requested by Notre Dame alumni, faculty, season-ticket holders and others eligible for the lottery. School officials believe it is the most requests ever received for an Irish bowl trip.

Just 10,000 to 11,000 of those ticket requests will be granted.

Notre Dame and Ohio State each received 15,000 tickets as their official allotment from the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Ariz.

Of Notre Dame's allotment, 2,500 tickets were sold last week to students. Another 1,000 go to Anthony Travel, the Notre Dame-affiliated travel agency, as part of travel packages sold for the game. Some tickets also will go to university officials, coaches' families and players' families.

That leaves 10,000 to 11,000 to be distributed in the lottery, Berlo said. The lottery is a computer-generated, random-number selection process that takes about 24 hours to run, he said.

There is no chance either school will receive additional tickets from the Fiesta Bowl, because all the tickets are gone.